


Burning Creation

by JackBivouac



Series: Iron Gods [4]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work, Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alien Sex, Bestiality, Bondage, Breeding, Chair Bondage, Double Penetration, Erotic Electrostimulation, F/M, Fisting, Forced Orgasm, Humiliation, Interspecies Sex, Loss of Virginity, Monsters, Multi, Other, Oviposition, Porn With Plot, Rape, Revenge Sex, Robots, Size Difference, Tentacles, Unconscious Sex, Vines, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-07-09 06:47:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19883368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackBivouac/pseuds/JackBivouac
Summary: New backstory oneshots deviating/derived from an Iron Gods campaign





	1. Tits Up

The Foundry Tavern used to be one of Torch’s most popular watering holes. Ever since the violet, Black Hill Flame went out and the foundry owner, Khor Bain, went to investigate, both tavern and foundry were temporarily closed. Things had been quiet, so quiet that when a scream and crash issued from the foundry storeroom, Zwei was almost hopeful.

The white-haired Numerian girl dropped her mop and ran out of the half-cleaned tavern. Three feet from the storeroom, the door burst open. 

A five-foot robot built of gray and white metallic polymer lurched out on three, spider-like legs. Its torso, arms, and head were vaguely humanoid, its single, blazing “eye” fixing on Zwei. It struck at the girl with its four-fingered fists.

She jerked back with a yelp, the air whistling before her nose. Zwei grit her teeth and drew a dagger from either side, slicing in the same motion.

Though her blades blurred with the speed of her slice, these were no wild strikes. Zwei’s daggers sliced through the gaps in the robot’s chassis to cut through the two most critical points of its circuitry.

The light left the robot’s eye. The machine slumped to a full stop in the badlands’ orange dust. Zwei sheathed her blades and let out a long, exasperated sigh.

“Val?”

A second, dust-covered figure emerged from the storeroom with a sheepish grin. The two girls were identical, save that Val kept her white locks in long, loose waves and Zwei kept hers as short and utilitarian as any mechanic.

“Sorry, Zwei. I know I shouldn’t have touched, but I just wanted something to remind me of Dad. It’s been almost a week…”

“Five days.”

“He should’ve been back by now!”

That, Zwei couldn’t argue with. With her twin on the verge of full-blown tears, she pulled the dusty girl into a hug. 

“Give him a week. While you’re at it, go take a bath,” she joked with half a grin.

“Alright, alright. You win.”

Zwei did not, however, follow Val back to the house. Her sister was right. And with no one technically barred from visiting Black Hill, there was something she could do about it.

#*#*#*#*

Zwei never went to town, much less Black Hill, but even she could tell something was amiss. The road ended at a blackened hilltop pierced at the center by a sinkhole where Torch’s violet fire once burned. Now a rippling black fluid the surface swirling with prismatic sheen filled the bottom half of the depression. A bubble formed and burst, giving vent to the incongruous but somehow familiar scent of vanilla, burning wildflowers, and crude oil.

The mechanic shook her head and edged around the sinkhole toward the mouth of the Black Hill Caverns. The air in the pitch-black tunnels was bitter, stinking of mold and vinegar but it was breathable. 

Barely. Zwei kept her torch close to cover the stank with its smoke. She padded softly through the dripping tunnels, growing colder the further she descended into the heart of the hills.

Metal glinted at the edge of her lighted perimeter. A collection of crates, boxes, rubble, and scavenged metal laid heaped in the corner of this damp cave. Something must’ve put them here.

Zwei was about to high-tail it to the next tunnel when the chalk drawings on the wall caught her eye. There were twisted, spiny plants, emaciated four-armed humanoids, and a familiar, three-legged creature.

“Janky robot?”

The air whistled behind her. Zwei whipped around, daggers slashing. Three other daggers clanged off her blades.

She spotted two hairless humanoids, their skin the same black hue as the cavern stone. Each skulk held a shortsword in one hand.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Zwei growled through clenched teeth. She realized too late that she should’ve spoken more nicely in case the skulks didn’t speak Hallit.

They didn’t. The two charged her, shortswords swinging. 

Zwei had no choice but to fight. She parried their swings but followed through, slicing through flesh. Wetness splattered her face.

The mechanic froze. Her eyes met that of the wounded skulk in front of her. Blood pumped from the deep gash through their jugular.

The skulk fell to the cavern floor. Zwei’s daggers followed with a piercing clatter. A rope looped around her neck from behind, squeezing tight.

Zwei kicked and clawed at the third skulk, but she was helpless without her daggers. The strength sapped from her limbs as she burned through her last breath.

The remaining skulk rose from their fallen brethren’s side to slam their foot into Zwei’s gut. She passed out with a pained grunt.

The skulks let their choked out prisoner drop to the floor. The two looked down at the mechanic. Even her utilitarian leathers couldn’t hide her voluptuous curves.

The skulks stripped the gear from her body, adding it to their scavenged heap. The girl’s skin was dewy and pristine except for a brand on her shoulder, a triangle bounded by a circular gear. A treasure of flesh.

They wrenched her arms straight down her back, binding them at the elbows and wrists. Her legs, they bound thigh to calf. They pulled her arms back, forcibly arching her back, and lashed her wrists to her ankles by a taut cord to complete her pathetic hog-tie.

The mere act of forcing the girl into such a vulnerable bind hardened the skulks and cemented their desire for vengeance. They flipped her onto her back and painfully tied limbs.

One straddled her head, shoving their cock into her unconscious mouth. The second squatted between her spread thighs, holding her by the hips. The skulk rammed their cock into her unsuspecting asshole.

Zwei woke in screaming agony. She immediately choked on the dick pounding the back of her throat into a pulp. The sudden shock caused her throat and anus to clench down around the dicks railing her from both ends into the floor of the cavern.

The girl’s body convulsed, wracking with orgasm between the raping dicks in her mouth and anus. Tears and snot ran from her face, as her body spasmed helplessly in her bonds.

Cum exploded from the skulks’ cocks. They pumped their cum toilet’s squeezing shafts full to the last drop. They pulled out, leaving her leaking and softly sobbing.

Zwei had never been so utterly helpless and alone.


	2. Two Nil

Zwei didn’t think her situation could get any worse. Until it did. The skulks carried her cum-dripping body by the ropes into the pitch black darkness of the cave.

Blinded and disoriented, she could only assume they’d reached the skulks’ camp when she was unceremoniously dropped. Zwei grunted at the stinging smack of rock against her breasts, stomach, and thighs. She pressed her ringing head to the cool, damp stone.

But the skulks weren’t about to afford their kin-slayer rest. As one sorted through the metal and technological scraps they’d found, the other laid down atop Zwei’s back, crushing her body against the cavern floor.

“No! No! Stop!” she screamed hoarsely, struggling and writhing under the densely muscled bastard.

The skulk, ignoring her cries, dug their fingers into the soft flesh of her breasts and screwed their cock through her virgin pussy lips.

Zwei’s hog-tied body seized and clenched in shock around the skulk’s dick tearing a bloody path through her virginal shaft. Her eyes bulged, her voice choking out from the pained shocks lancing up from her violated pussy.

Human or not, the skulk knew exactly where to hit their cumdumps. Their pistoning dick slammed their captive virgin right in the sweet, untouched dip of her wall.

Despite her agony, Zwei let out a strangled squeal. Her traitorous pussy squeezed wet, hot, and tight around her rapist’s inhuman dick as they pounded spasming pleasure in her clenched gut.

Zwei gasped and snorted like a mounted mare. Her body wracked in convulsion, jerking and straining at the brutal bonds around her arms and legs. She rocked and bucked under the skulk fucking her, drool slopping down her cheek to the cavern floor.

Only when the skulk pulled out, leaving her a quivering mess, did the violated virgin begin softly weeping. She stopped when something wet splattered the back of her head and neck. What…?

Zwei didn’t dare hope until she heard a lifeless body smack the cavern floor beside her. Her tears dried in an instant. Just in time as light bloomed in the darkness once more.

A razor-sharp blade cut through the ropes around her legs and ankles. Her elbows and wrists remained bound down the line of her back. A strong, green-skinned hand flipped her onto her back.

Zwei found herself staring up the line of a longsword at her throat to the powerful frame of a half-orc. His black hair was shaved at the sides and bound in a topknot, a style popular among several Kellid tribes. Half his face, neck, and body were covered in tattoos.

The half-orc’s amber eyes were narrowed. “What are you? What are you doing here?”

“What AM I?” Zwei scoffed, shaking her head in confusion.

“You’ve been branded as Technic League property,” said the half-orc, jerking his chin at the gear and triangle mark on her shoulder. His eyes softened in a confusion of his own. “...You’re human.”

Zwei could only gape for a second there. She'd been rescued by a fucking idiot. She cleared her throat and filed that tidbit about the Technic League away for later questioning.

"Yeah, I'm Zwei, and I'm looking for my dad, Khor Bain."

The half-orc sheathed his sword. "I'm Nil."

Nil helped her up but didn't untie her. "I know Bain. We find him, and he can say if you're really who you say you are."

A muscle flexed in Zwei's jaw. She was not, however, in a position to argue. For one, she and Val were adopted, so of course they looked nothing like their father. For two, she was weaponless, naked, and bound.

"Fine. Let's not waste any more time."

Nil and Zwei followed the skulks' chalk-marked route through the cave to...a slightly curved tunnel of dark gray metal. The odd companions shared a glance. Though broken and heaped with metal junk and cave rubble, this was a panelled hallway.

"Ladies first?" said Nil.

Zwei fixed him with a withering glare.

"Oh, right. Sword and torch-wielding people first."

The second he stepped inside, an electric eye blazed on from the dark end of the hall. Metal clanged against metal in a familiar, three-legged run.

"Cut me loose!" yelled Zwei.

"I-er-hands," Nil garbled, head jerking from the girl to the murderous charging robot. In his indecision, he only managed to drop his torch.

A polymer mesh net whipped through the air, catching both organic humanoids. Nil and Zwei hit the metal floor in a vulnerable tangle.

"Cut it now!"

The half-orc scrambled for his sword, which he'd now also dropped.

The robot clanged to a stop, slamming both fists upon its captured intruders. Nil and Zwei rolled apart. A sharp metal edge dug into the girl's shoulder.

The mechanic wormed herself up, dragging the cutting edge through the ropes at her elbows and wrists.

The robot and Nil shoved on opposite sides of his longsword. The half-orc's arms shook, the robot inching the blade toward his throat. It used both arms as well.

Zwei yanked the metal shard from the rubble and jabbed it into critical circuitry in the robot's neck. Its blazing eye flickered and swung toward her. It lifted one hand off the sword for a pummeling blow to her gut.

The girl choked, her vision swimming. Nil seized the chance.

Lightning crackled down the length of his blade. He rolled, throwing the robot's arm off to the side. And twisting his blade up through its chassis plates.

The robot snapped, crackled, and popped in electrical overload. Nil grabbed the naked girl, shielding her with his body.

But rather than explode, the machine simply powered down. Smoke wafted from beneath its polymer plates. Its head and arms hung still.

"Uh, thanks for that," said Nil, throwing of the net. He drew his backpack between him and Zwei. And pulled out her gear. "If we're gonna keep going, I should probably give this back to you. If it's yours."

"It is," said the mechanic, her voice as dry as the badlands' orange dust. "Thanks."


	3. Here There Be Aliens

Nil and Zwei, fully geared up, followed the tunnel as it curved from metal into stone and from stone into...the two froze at its rubble-blocked end, Nil’s torch flame flapping like a tiny cape at the sudden wealth and breadth of air. 

A desert valley under a starless, night sky stretched out at their feet, vast and seemingly endless despite the cave’s containment. Dunes of sand rolled as far as the eye could see, a vista broken here and there by strange, spiky shells and dead, contorted fronds like the branches of buried trees.

“Ho-ly shit,” Nil mouthed beside her.

Zwei wouldn’t admit it to this half-orc in particular, but the feeling was mutual. Instead, she shouldered her pack and stepped off into the sand. “Come on.”

There was no time to waste. Dad was waiting for them on the other side of the indoor desert. She hoped.

They trekked for hours over the dunes. Their calves sunk like iron boots into the sand. Their sweat ran like ran from their bodies, vanishing as soon as it touched down upon the thirsty earth.

It was the sudden gust of wind, however, throwing up a wall of storming sand in their eyes that finally convinced them to stop for the “night.” Nil hooked his arm through Zwei’s, dragging her to the shelter of caves within the cave.

They shook the sand from their clothes, but the howl of the storm outside was deafening. Wordlessly, the two tromped deeper into their shelter. Though they were not the first to use it as such.

Nil’s torch revealed old remnants of stone tools and weapons. Crude paintings on the walls depicted four-armed, oblong-headed humanoids hunting, gathering, and worshipping a great shape burning in the sky. Just a guess, but it was not the sun.

The paintings ended just before the narrow tunnel opened to a wide, cozy cavern empty save for a white, coral-like rock formation. Whirled patterns had been traced into its surrounding sand. Most importantly, this pristinely preserved cavern was perfectly silent.

“I guess we can stay here for tonight,” said Nil.

Zwei, way ahead of him, strode toward the right side of the chamber. She threw her pack into the sand. “Mine.”

“Right,” sighed the half-orc. He walked toward the coral rock, placing the torch in one of its many holes. As he headed to the opposite side, his feet sudden sunk knee deep into the sand. “Whoa! What the…?!”

He slapped one palm against the sand to steady himself. The coarse grains swallowed it to the elbow. Which sent his other hand flailing to the ground where it was promptly sucked below as well.

Zwei screamed from the other side of the cave, falling backward as her legs were pulled under to the knee. Her hands flailed down behind her where they were swallowed to the elbow just as Nil’s.

The two cursed and struggled to wrench their limbs free, Nil on all fours and Zwei bent backward on her fours. The false sands, however, had congealed in the humanoids’ heat into a sticky quagmire completely enveloping their trapped limbs.

Leaving the two completely vulnerable as six long, thick purple tentacles dripping with gluey secretion extended out from the white shell of the ghelarn. Nil and Zwei screamed their curses, jerking helplessly in the thick, crushing hold of the quagmire.

The thick, dripping tentacle that snaked down the throat of each shut them up with its wall-stuffing girth. Nil and Zwei choked and gagged on the slithering infiltrator, distracting them from the two tentacles squeezing through the belt of their pants until it was too late.

Their eyes bulged in pain, screams strangling around the tentacles in their throats as a thick, sticky tentacle wedged up the upside-down girl’s pussy and anus while two split the half-orc’s asshole doubly wide.

The free bridge’s over their restrained arms and legs bucked and writhed as the tentacles pistoned up their stuffed holes, tearing their over-stretched walls apart. 

The ghelarn, eager to leech nutrients from their heated cores, shoved its tentacles as deep as they would through the humanoids’ throat and one or more fuckholes until it was pounding their clenched guts from both ends. Its sucking, beating tentacles battered spasms directly into the taut-stretched walls of their fully-stuffed throats and fuckholes.

Nil and Zwei’s shafts clamped helplessly tight around the impaling lengths and girths, forcing their bent bodies into wracking convulsions. The ghelarn, oblivious to their agonized pleasure, pumped and leeched, feeding from their quaking flesh until it had its fill.

It pulled its tentacles from their spasming holes with a series of sticky pops and squelches. Its entrapping quagmire pushed the used, dripping bodies back up onto the surface of the sand. The fully sated ghelarn retracted back into its shell. 

All three occupants of the cave slipped into the dreamless black of unconsciousness.


	4. Sex Bob-Ot

Zwei woke in darkness on the sand floor of the ghelarn’s cavern. She crawled up to sitting. “Nil…? Nil?”

There was a cough from the other side of the cave followed by what sounded like the emesis of several mouthfuls of sand.

“H-here,” rasped Nil from his hands and knees. The half-orc, able to see in such darkness, lit a torch for her benefit. “You ok?”

“Fine, but we won’t be if that thing wakes up again. Come on.”

The two staggered to their feet and out of the cavern back onto the dunes. It was still an eternal, starless night outside, but at least the sandstorm had receded. Without the storm to impede their process, they managed the hours-long trek to the far side of the contained desert.

A crisp glow of light shone from the far, metal wall, though no obvious source of the light was apparent. Zwei’s fingers brushed over the panels, seeking.

“What are you…?”

“I need to focus.”

There. She unsheathed a dagger and finessed the tip of the blade into the circuitry along its edge. The panel popped open with a pneumatic hiss.

The metal room beyond was brightly lit by glowing panels in its ceiling. To the left and right, complex machines consisting of spiral tubes and nozzles twitched and hummed. The very air seemed abuzz with energy despite the machines being cracked and in disrepair.

“Damn,” Nil whistled low. “Way to go, grease monkey.”

“Mechanic,” Zwei corrected flatly but not unkindly.

“Way to go, mechanic. So...you wanna go first? Or shall I?”

The mechanic shook her head and held out her hand. “Together?”

“Yeah, that works.” The half-orc took her hand with a grin.

They stepped through the opened panel and into a wall of pure, hitherto invisible electricity. Nil and Zwei screamed as their bodies jerked and convulsed in the electrocuting current, gravity wrenching their unbalanced forms all the way through the crackling currents. They fell to the floor unconscious and smoking from the pores.

Neither saw the lanky, grayish-tan alien who stepped out from the shadows. The kasatha hefted up one body in the two arms of their left side and one in the two arms of their right. Hetuath laid them on their bellies on a large metal table and pulled a length of electrical tape from their ragged red jacket.

They bent the girl’s and half-orc’s arms behind their backs and bound them tight in tape from elbows to wrists. The alien then unbuckled their belts and removed their pants. They propped their semi-naked captives into one wheely chair each.

Hetuath threaded the half-orc’s legs through either of the holes in the armrests. Using more tape, they bound him around the knee to the frame of the armrests. The kasatha repeated the process with the girl. With her shorter legs, her boots dangled over the floor.

They were ready. For talk or torture.

Hetuath activated the collector robot they’d rewired with a bioscanned touch. The robot whirred to life, hovering at waist-level on four circular rotators. The spindly, multi-jointed fingers of its four hands curled into fists.

“Wake them,” the alien commanded in clipped Androffan, language of the robots and their human builders.

The robot shoved one fist into the girl’s fully exposed pussy and the other into her equally vulnerable asshole. It plunged its other two fists up the half-orc’s single hole.

Nil and Zwei shrieked into consciousness, burning agony tearing up their shafts as the robot’s arms pistoned and pounded their holes into the chairs. They kicked with desperate strength but the robot hovered just out of reach of their bound legs. Their backs and bound arms banged against the backrests of the chairs, which clanged into the metal wall. 

There was no escape. The robot’s arms crackled with electricity. It punched a stunning volt right up the captives’ pussy and anuses into their clenched guts. The electric charge shocked their shafts into clenching spasms.

Half-orc and human gurgled incoherently as their tape-bound bodies wracked and writhed in forced convulsions. Hetuath crossed their arms over their leanly muscled chest.

“Enough.”

The voltage ended, the robot’s arms ceasing their brutal pumping. It did not, however, remove its penetrating appendages from either captive impaled on its arms. 

Nil and Zwei slumped and sagged on the raping metal, grunting in both pain and relief. Their eyes finally focused on the robot’s commander. Hetuath addressed them in Androffan.

“You killed my people. My entire tribe, slaughtered by yours.”

Much to Zwei’s surprise, Nil replied back in the same tongue as the alien.

“N-no! No, that wasn’t us! Diff-different tribes!”

The kasatha tilted their spade-shaped head, solid black eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you speak the truth. The first group did not speak Androffan.”

“I do, you have to believe me. What-what happened to the first group?”

“After they murdered my people with the guns of our long-dead slavers?”

“Um, yes,” the half-orc gulped.

“I lured them to the ‘science deck.’” Two of Hetuath’s four-fingered hands formed air quotes. “If the plants haven’t killed them, the robots will.”

“Oof,” Nil winced. Zwei was not gonna like that. “Ok, so they’re probably dead, but that group had a-a captive with them, someone from our tribe. Please, you have to let us go so we can at least gather his body.”

The kasatha uncrossed their arms. A proper burial for the dead, this they understood. “Withdraw.”

The collector robot pulled its arms from the captives’ holes with a series of loud, wet pops. The half-orc and the girl hissed and twitched in their chairs but at last their humiliating torment had ended.

Hetuath drew a shortsword into each of their hands. They cut Nil and Zwei free in a few blurred, precision strokes. The half-naked pair crawled up to their hands and knees.

The kasatha gave them a nod and walked out from the room, the collector robot flying out behind them. There was nothing to fear from those two, especially with them heading straight to their own doom.

Hetuath stopped in the shadows. It was exactly the kind of risk that the kasatha should’ve taken as chieftain of their kidnapped, now slaughtered tribe.


	5. Daddy Dearest

Nil offered Zwei a helping hand to her feet. 

She didn't take it, searching the half-orc's face with narrowed eyes instead. "How were you able to speak with that alien?"

His hand lowered, face hardening to a stiff mask that allayed no suspicions whatsoever. "Do you want to save your dad or not?"

Nil might've been a dumbass, but he was smart enough to realize he couldn't say anything without incriminating himself. Which meant whatever his agenda was, Zwei and likely her father weren't going to like it.

A muscle flexed in Zwei's jaw. All she could do was accept his help for the moment and be on guard for when Nil shifted from asset to whatever he was really here for. She pushed to her feet and gave him an equally stiff nod.

"Let's go."

The two padded down the curving metal halls in strained silence. There was no need for a torch. Enough glowing panels in the ceiling still worked to provide their mysterious light.

The tunnel ended in a large, strange room. There was a raised area near a circular table. Behind it was a long metal desk with blinking lights and colored panels. Two black couches sat in front of either of two black, metal pillars. At the back of the room, on the walls on either side of double doors were splatters of dried blood and patches of rust-red mold.

Nil and Zwei instinctively froze. The half-orc drew his longsword, the mechanic her daggers. When no robots or aliens popped out in attack, they proceeded cautiously to the doors.

Bloodstains marred the floor and walls of the hallway. As if that weren't enough of hint of an altercation, the walls were also scorched and smeared with ash. They followed the path of destruction to a thick door made of some kind of chemically treated glass.

Despite its transparency, fog and a wild growth of green and brown vegetation blocked the view within. Nil and Zwei shared a look. The half-orc tried to jimmy the door open with his longsword. The mechanic kept looking.

There was no apparent keyhole. There was, however, a strange panel with a black screen and a no-longer-glowing sensor beneath it. The entire panel had been unscrewed from two sides and now hung slightly askew.

Zwei turned the panel counterclockwise along the wall, tugging wires with it. The door opened with a hiss and thick, wet cloud of earthy vapor right in Nil's face.

"Bleh!" He shuddered and tried to spit the taste off his tongue.

All the air within was thick, warm, and moist. The stagnant cloud muted the lights and left trails of condensation down the jungle of thick-stemmed plants and vines.

A low humming sound filled the air, broken by intermittent grunting. Between the curtains of growth, the tall column of plant matter like a tree trunk from spread through a network of vines from the center of the room. The central column bound a grizzled, sharp-jawed middle-aged man to its trunk by the wrists over his head. His legs were held spread in front of him by its thick roots. His eyes stared next to lifelessly at the floor.

A stocky, green-skinned humanoid with broad leaves protruding from its head, limbs, and torso stood before the man. Three trunk-like vines extended below the leaves between its legs. One stuffed his mouth the other two pistoned into the man’s asshole.

Khor Bain, sagging and limp as a corpse between the tight bonds around his wrists and legs gave the erratic jerk and twitching spasm when shapes suspiciously like eggs pumped from the vegepygmy chief’s ovipositing trunks into his mouth and asshole. His belly, usually taut with muscle, now swelled as though pregnant from the distending mass being raped into his stomach and guts.

The sight was nearly enough to make Zwei scream out in murderous outrage. But a flash of moving green caught the mechanic’s eye. She turned just in time. Her daggers clanged against the claws of the springing vegepygmy.

She threw off the creature, Nil doing the same beside her. The turn put them back-to-back, and the sheer mass of vegetal attackers from either flank held them there.

With no more use for stealth, they roared in attack both in outrage for Bain and in fear of their identical fate if they failed. But there were simply too many. 

For every vegepygmy they cut down in a splatter of green gore, another seemingly grew from the plant matter in the room to take its place. Their limbs wearied, more and more small but razor-sharp claws finding purchase through their armor.

“Nil,” Zwei growled between her teeth, the hilts of her daggers slick with blood both green and red.

“What?” he shouted, tossing off another partially severed corpse into the unending throng of violent green.

“I need a favor.”

“Little busy right now.”

“Just kill me.”

“What?”

Before she could clarify, the thronging claws eased around her. Zwei raised her head, blinking through the rivulets of blood and sweat. Gray blurred in the midst of the vegepygmies, four short, deadly swords at the end of four arms. In her attackers’ fall, she looked over her shoulder and Nil’s. The alien’s collector robot was ripping green bodies apart on his side.

The two stepped as one out from the dying crowds. They ran, driving their blades into the exposed back of the vegepygmy chief.

The creature shrieked, trunks yanking instinctively from Bain’s holes. The half-orc roared and slashed through them, spilling leaf-shelled green eggs from either side. Zwei ripped her blades through the chief’s neck with mechanical precision. Its head rolled across the floor with its spilled seed and amputated dicks.

Nil slumped with his hands on his knees, breathing hard. Zwei jogged past him on shaking legs, tripping and nearly falling onto her father. She caught herself with a dagger buried into the central trunk.

“Dad,” she panted.

He made no move, not even to look at her. She cut him free from his bonds if not from his irrevocable shame. No child, adopted or otherwise, should be forced to witness the rape and breeding of a parent.


	6. To the Core

Little of Bain's clothes had survived his encounter with the vegepygmies, but they found his sleeveless leather trench coat to wrap him in. He huddled against the wall of the hallway with the coat pulled tight around him. Nil and Zwei crouched on either side of him, unable to draw his gaze.

The alien, whom the half-orc helped introduce as Hetuath, leaned against the opposite wall at a wary distance. The kasatha folded one pair of arms over their chest, the hands of the other set casually in their pockets. The robot continued whirring and hovering at their shoulder.

“Dad, do you...want to talk?” Zwei pried as gently as the first turn of the most delicate screw.

Bain stared sightlessly at the floor.

Nil sighed and drew his hand down his half-tatted face. He tried a blunt shock tactic instead. “Is it true you murdered all of Hetuath’s tribe?”

“What?!” snapped Zwei, rocking so far back on her heels that she had to slap a palm against the wall to keep from falling over.

Bain’s eyes jerked up to meet the half-orc’s. “What? No! I...the town council asked me to lead their investigation team into Black Hill Caves. I took them further than I’d ever been before, into a desert habitat, and that’s when we ran into another team.

“This part...perhaps you could translate as much as you can, Nil,” Bain said quietly, eyes flicking toward Hetuath. “The other team was led by an android woman, an artificial humanoid. They killed everyone except for me because I told them I would open any door and disable any robot for them. I was...desperate. I have a family to care for.

“I did nothing to stop them from killing the aliens we found in the desert. In the end, they found they didn’t my help when they could simply destroy everything in their path. They left me here to die while they went on to the ‘engineering deck’ to set up some power relay from the ‘reactor core.’

“That’s doubtlessly what’s caused the disappearance of the violet flames.” For the first time, Bain spoke with perfect clarity, his mind removed from present circumstances as it engineered the pieces of Torch’s puzzle together. “Some preliminary agent knocked out the ‘reactor core’ and now they’re rerouting it to turn the flames’ power elsewhere.”

“We have to stop them,” said Zwei.

“I’m going to kill them,” said Hetuath at the same time, though in an entirely different language. They pushed off the wall, four hands at the ready.

Nil nodded slowly. He’d been sent only to investigate what Bain was doing here and report back about all technological materials encountered. But an engineering deck that controlled a reactor core, the Technic League had a hunger for such things. Technically, they owned them, by royal decree of the Black Sovereign.

Bain pushed to his feet and tied his sash securely. “You’re right, but I don’t know where the engineering deck is.”

The half-orc looked to the kasatha. He gave them a sharp, simple nod.

“Follow me,” said the chieftain.

#*#*#*#*

The kasatha led them in stealth to a vast, domed chamber. A balcony ran around its edges, the curved walls covered in blinking lights and impossible machinery. A staircase joined the balcony to the middle of the room. Behind them, hazy, translucent images floated over the pink glass surface of a large, flat machine.

Next to it stood a more recent addition to the room, a statue cobbled together from broken machines into the shape of an upraised claw. Mechanical junk laid heaped before the claw between two smoking braziers. Like offerings at a shrine.

Hetuath pointed a long, slender finger at a door of black metal on the far side of the room. It was guarded by a squad of ratfolk and a gargoyle, a creature like a winged, horned demon carved from a solid block of dark gray stone.

“I can open the door, but someone or someones have to distract the guards,” whispered Zwei.

"That's you and me, bud," said Nil, slapping a hand on Hetuath's shoulder.

The slight smack of green on gray immediately turned the large ears of the ratfolk and fanged maw of the gargoyle. A fraction of the ratfolk broke off from the alerted squad, charging in the motley crew’s direction.

“Whoops,” said the half-orc. Then shrugged, lightning crackling down the length of his longsword. He ran out to meet them. “Come at me, rat-os!”

The kasatha followed on his heels, drawing their shortswords with blurring, hissing speed. The collector robot followed its reprogrammed master, a shocking voltage of its own crackling between its fingers.

At the sight of the alien and robot, the gargoyle took to flight in the vast engineering deck. It hurtled into flying bot, spinning in a spark-flying maelstrom of horn, fang, and claw screeching against metal. The rest of the squad, save for a single ratfolk doorguard, followed their leader, the bulk of them swarming around Hetuath while the first fraction swarmed Nil.

Zwei and Bain kept to the shadows, sneaking as fast as they could along the curved wall to the door in the chaotic clangor. The ratfolk at the reactor door, however, had darkvision. They spotted the two immediately. 

Shunk! Shunk! Before the ratfolk could raise their voice in alarm, one dagger of Zwei’s and one of Bain’s buried with flying force into their neck. The ratfolk fell to the ground, blood pooling swiftly beneath them.

Zwei froze, trapped on the other side of the dying ratfolk as the blood threatened to soil her boots. Bain, however, stepped over the body, plucking his dagger free in the same motion. 

He jimmied the sensory panel off and fiddled with the wires. The doors swooshed apart in seconds. He looked back at his daughter caught at the edge of the blood pool. Bain smiled grimly. “Stay here and watch the door.”

He stepped through without another word, his boots leaving red tracks in his wake.

Zwei looked from the door to her allies in combat. She wasn’t any use to anyone as a doorguard. The mechanic grit her teeth and yanked her dagger out of the last doorguard’s neck. She jumped after her father but didn’t quite clear the blood puddle.

Zwei slipped into the reactor chamber, her flailing arms barely missing a panel of blinking lights and buttons. Neither she nor anyone else who entered the room could’ve missed the massive machine looming against the far wall on a ten-foot platform.

Two immense cylinders of pulsing violet light throbbed at the machine’s core, while above a thinner cylinder extended through the ceiling. Welded ladders provided access to the machine’s platform, while at the center, a smaller machine with several metal spikes protruding from its heart extended from the larger one. The entire room vibrated with a roaring thunder so that the very air itself seemed to be alive.

There on the floor before the platform, Bain and an unnaturally pale combatant with a shock of purple hair, grunted and grappled each other as they reached for an impossibly advanced pistol.

“Yike!” Zwei crashed and fell on top of them, breaking the grapple.

The two broke apart, but the purple-haired android was faster. She snatched up the pistol and rolled up onto one knee. She fired.

Six shots, rapid succession. Zwei and Bain screamed in pain as the burning projectiles scorched holes through leather and flesh. The android didn’t stop, launching herself into a brutal kick to Bain’s temple.

“Dad!” Zwei grasped for him as he fell. Her palm only smacked the tiled floor, blood running down her arm.

The android stamped her bootheel onto Zwei’s fingers, pinning her arm. The mechanic cried out. The woman tilted her head, glowing blue eyes meeting Zwei’s. They narrowed to piercing slits.

“What ARE you?”

Zwei could only stare up at the android in confusion. The woman herself was a ghostly blur thanks to the hot, pained tears.

Thunk! A mechanic’s heavy, iron wrench caught the android in the back of the head. The light flickered in her eyes. She dropped to the ground.

“That’s my daughter, you bitch,” growled Bain. He offered Zwei a hand up, wrench still in hand.

She took it, blinking away the last of the tears with the trace of a grin. That was her father.

The two ignored the unconscious body at their feet, turning their attention back to the machine platform.

“I’ve never tinkered with any machinery this advanced,” said Bain.

“Same,” joked Zwei. “We’ll just have to figure it out together.”

Bain grinned, ruffling his daughter’s hair. “That’s my girl.”


End file.
